European Document/Lech in Lotusland
McGurn, William
EUROPEAN DOCUMENT LECH IN LOTUSLAND by William McGurn Gdansk airport: Even the planes are run-down. In Poland for less than two hours, and already General Jaruzelski's state airline has managed...
...A year ago this time, Polish hopes were beginning to bud after the long winter of martial law...
...Conditions forced us to look for solutions in our values- we are very grateful for those values...
...I note that this is how John Paul II talks of work...
...The mood is set, the tempo day-time television...
...Dariusz Filar, who speaks perfect English, brings me inside to meet Lech Walesa...
...He did manage to smuggle out some tapes, and a complete transcript of the Popieluszko murder trial...
...For one thing, the more than 600 jailed members of the outlawed trade union Solidarity were about to be released from prison under a general amnesty...
...Shortly thereafter, Andrews was interrogated by the police and ordered to leave the country...
...William McGurn is editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal/Europe and a European editor of The American Spectator...
...It might make a good film...
...Nervous- confident-or hesitant...
...He turns back to his pgczek with a gusto that implies the loss is my fault...
...The Solidarity president mentions soccer, and says he was a goalie...
...On the bright side, we shall soon see a teenage Lech Walesa having his first kiss, courtesy of American T.V.kiss, courtesy of American T.V...
...they would be gravely disappointed to learn what these Westerners were up to...
...What day or evening gave you the most fun in the past three or four years...
...Andrews is now ready to begin...
...It must be a break from having to have a one-line solution for every Polish problem...
...On the chair behind Andrews rests a clump of light-brown hair that at first glance appears a napping cat...
...He mentions too that Walesa is tired, from the pain-killers he is taking for a foot problem...
...occasionally they take a peep out the window...
...Father Henryk Jankowski, whose rectory this is, wears an expression of granite...
...We want to give a spiritual dimension to work," he says...
...That's where they always stick the Fat Kid," grins Andrews pleasantly, looking to the rest of us...
...You notice in your own societies sometimes this emptiness...
...he continues...
...another cited the declining standard of living in Poland, the country's staggering debt, and the Jaruzelski regime's intention to use IMF-sponsored "reforms" to increase its grip on society...
...In the meantime, other priests reported being attacked, including one, Father Tadeusz Zaleski, who had the Solidarity V-for-victory symbol burned into his skin...
...Brygida's Church, a short walk from the Lenin Shipyards and the three-crosses monument to the Polish workers killed during the 1970 food-price protests...
...The "war" on Polish lips appeared to be winding down...
...That gives me some right to represent them...
...Sad to say, I am intimidated enough that 1 almost believe him...
...An older academic there spoke of his memories of Stalinism...
...How did you feel on your wedding night...
...In July the government raised the price of meat, and Solidarity called a 15-minute strike...
...Then, too, the government had agreed to a plan allowing the church to channel badly needed Western aid to Polish farmers, even passing special legislation to smooth the way...
...Of course," says Walesa, "he is a Pole...
...I have a few questions of my own, on labor, the Pope, the fortieth anniversary of World War II...
...The producer, Ralph Andrews, is about halfway through a list of questions for columnist Jack Anderson...
...There follow a few other queries, about Polish membership in the IMF, about the possibility of a benefit telethon in the states...
...There is no mistaking the room for anything but a rectory...
...This is merely a warmup...
...tomorrow perhaps...
...But during an evening among a group of Solidarity people in a Gdansk workers' project, I hear a different story...
...he asks...
...Father Jankowski and the others shuffle a bit, doubtless suspecting they are losing something in the translation...
...There was the murder of Father Popieluszko, of course, and the subsequent trial of Polish security officers that the regime turned into an attack on the church...
...The next question is read slowly, emphatically, for benefit of the home audience...
...The detachment of police assigned to follow him wait outside...
...The conversation of the next few hours reads like a transcript from "The Newly wed Game...
...Early the next afternoon (still sans a change of clothes), I am waiting by a statue of the Pope outside St...
...In other countries this is not always so...
...Any publicity, of course, would be appreciated...
...Then Andrews- who with his shaved head and open silk shirt looks every bit the film producer-pulls out his own questions and fidgets with his tape recorder...
...What is your favorite television show...
...Yes, adds Walesa, but you have to have fast hands...
...On it goes, for perhaps an hour, with Walesa occasionally showing effects of the medication he is taking...
...The year has brought many changes, they say, all bad...
...In Poland for less than two hours, and already General Jaruzelski's state airline has managed to lose my one suitcase...
...The various Solidarity members in the room whisper...
...At the same time the money Solidarity raised from its dues was turned over to the new, government-sanctioned unions, while the government itself appears to have granted several million dollars in credits to the Soviet Union...
...Puffing on his cigarettes, Walesa himself seems amused...
...In fact, it turns out to be a wig Andrews used to elude the police on his drive up from Warsaw...
...Official talk was of economic reform and Poland's joining the International Monetary Fund...
...Still later three Solidarity members were convicted in a Gdansk trial, with Walesa himself threatened with similar prosecution...
...At what age, Lech, did you discover girls...
...He is wearing a blue shirt and a brown sweater, over the left breast of which is pinned a miniature of the icon of the Virgin of Czestochowa...
...Over thick black coffee, the men talk about the need for the West to stick by them, especially on the little things...
...deep reds compete with heavy black-wood furniture that no woman would ever tolerate...
...In the lounge, a heavy-set LOT official sits drinking coffee and finishing a sticky pqczek...
...I'm free to sit in and ask any questions of my own...
...movie about Walesa's life...
...To my surprise, and in contrast to news photos that often make him seem otherwise, Walesa looks neat, trim, and alert...
...Most of all, they emphasize the clouds on the horizon: Jaruzelski is hunkering down...
...When I point to the Czestochowa icon on his breast, he becomes animated, struggling in his chair despite his bandaged foot...
...I was elected by 10 million people," he continues...
...I do not consider myself a 'thorn,'" says Walesa in reply to one question, concerning his relationship with the government...
...They note that the trumpeted Western aid for farmers has never been permitted to get off the ground...
...Where do you expect to be in 10 years, 20 years, and what are your hopes for the future...
...Andrews mentions in passing that the film will be called "Lech" and that he is hoping to have Michael Douglas in the lead role...
...I am ready for the battle of arguments...
...Filar explains that Walesa is being interviewed by a man from Columbia Pictures regarding a made-for-TV...
...Then the commercial break is over...
...I'll even accept apologizing...
...A polite inquiry about my bag elicits a militant indifference...
...Sports, always a crowd-pleaser, also comes up...
Vol. 18 • September 1985 • No. 9
